Interview with Erik Danielsson of Watain
June 2014
SC411: You only have 1 tour date in the USA this summer; will there be more USA dates in the near future?
Erik Danielsson: Not as it looks, no. This is like a one-off thing, you know? These guys got in touch and had like this perfect head-out show without any compromises in regards to the states show which is a very rare thing for the US. We’re gonna do Europe the whole summer and we went for this one-off thing. I’m willing to challenge the law, but a lot of US promoters aren’t, so we’ve been declined with pretty much everything in the US because of that lately, you know? From now on I think we’re only gonna work with people that are willing to sacrifice a little bit and willing to as well just like these guys in Brooklyn that are willing to challenge what is expected as a promoter because we have a complicated show. It has ingredients that are of quite controversial nature and most people don’t wanna do that and without that, we cannot do much. So yeah, with Brooklyn it’s gonna be like a one-off show and then we’ll see what happens in the future for the US, I think we’ve done our last compromised tour there as far as I’m concerned.
SC411: Is there a possibility for a North American tour with Watain, Dark Funeral, Marduk or other Swedish black metal bands for a Swedish black metal fest?
ED: Like I said, US is a very hard country to tour. I’m sure with Dark Funeral you dress up and put on a little bit of make-up and go up on stage and play some songs I’m sure that’s fine but for a band like Watain whose show is based on, you know, different things to put it lightly and that’s not gonna happen, no.
SC411: What music genres do you listen to in your spare time?
ED: I don’t know, I never really think about that. I don’t like to really go in that direction when it comes to music. I play whatever the devil is part of, you know? Everything that is diabolical and murder. It doesn’t matter if it’s Screamin’ Jay Hawkins or Destruction, you know? I can hear my God speaking through both of them and that’s what involves me when it comes to music.
SC411: Do you have any pre-show rituals?
ED: Well I mean it’s different from time to time, you know? Sometimes it’s enough to take a shot of whisky before going up on stage and other times you have to hit yourself in the face or vomit into a bucket and put your head inside of it or cut your flesh up in order to get into the mood. It really depends on the mood of the day. But in general, I don’t really feel us being challenged to go up on stage. It doesn’t feel like it’s very far away from my mentality. Usually it goes days before a show that I prepare myself, you know? Subconsciously. But sometimes you have to take a little bit of extra help and that can be from anything that suits you, you know? When the mind becomes like a raped child. That’s the state I like to be in before I go on stage.
SC411: What’s a band you’d like to tour with that you’ve never toured with before?
ED: Well there aren’t that many anymore to be entirely honest. I think we have toured with pretty much every band that we would like to tour with. I guess the only band left is Venom.
SC411: What countries or cities are your favorites to play in?
ED: I don’t know, it doesn’t really matter. To me, it’s just lines on the map, you know? It doesn’t really matter where the stage is, what matters is what happens on the stage and the relation between the fans and us, you know? The world, the Earth that we are living on is just a little turd, you know? And it’s like, no matter where you are in the turd, it’s still a turd.
SC411: When writing music, what are your influences?
ED: I don’t know, that’s a very personal question. I don’t really know how to-well I don’t-that’s something that I don’t talk to others about. At all. It’s like asking others what they think about when they masturbate.
SC411: What’s one of your favorite songs to play live?
ED: Well there’s one that I don’t like to play. We change the setlist pretty much every night and it very much all depends on the situation and where we are at spiritually and at that very moment in time. We have a 5 album catalog to choose from and that’s like 60 songs, you know? So we can pick and choose from for whatever the mood is for that night. Really, it’s impossible to answer that question, I don’t have a specific favorite song and such. It really depends where we are at.
SC411: Do you get nervous before playing a show?
ED: No.
SC411: What’s in the future for Watain?
ED: Well we are doing 11 dates. A festival tour this summer called Black Flames March, then the second date is in Brooklyn, New York. As far as the US is concerned, that’s like our plans for the US for right now and it’s going to be interesting. We added quite a lot of new ingredients to the stage show that I think will…well…ruin the thunder for a lot of people, hopefully. I think the beautiful thing about doing a festival is that a lot of people go to festivals because they want to have a little bit of fun, you know? Have some drinks with their friends and have a good time, right? So what we are going to do is ruin that mood entirely. Like to make them feel like they came to a funeral where there’s an open grave with a corpse on the inside. That’s how we want them to feel when they come to the festival and with the things that we have in mind to do on stage, I don’t think it’s going to be that hard to achieve.
For more information about WATAIN, please visit:
http://www.templeofwatain.com
http://www.facebook.com/
